Korczak

Once again Wajda returns to the war. Here, the Nazi-era ghetto is shown as a place of greater variety of experience than typically depicted. As Nazis film the street scenes we've grown accustomed to seeing, the hero of this film is able to run an orphanage with some semblance of normality, others are poor but not starving, and some Jews even live high on the hog trading with the guards. In fact, the studio-recreated scenes of ghetto death and poverty in the streets seemed cleaner, more airbrushed, than the ordinary town streets in Wajda's 35-year earlier A GENERATION (which was on the same bill when I saw this). But this is not a major criticism. Scriptwriter Agnieszka Holland's purpose isn't merely to retell Nazi horrors; her subject is how a moral force meets and responds to the holocaust. In his ghetto orphanage the director walls his children in to shield them. While he does business with the devil outside to keep them fed, inside the children care for each other, keep discipline with their own court of justice tempered with mercy, and put on classic plays (one dealing with death so the children will understand and not fear it). Wealthy, well-meaning gentiles outside the ghetto try to save the doctor, but he won't consider it. Finally, inevitably, the children are put in a railway car to the ovens. The whole point and power of the film is that this man's will has kept his children's humanity intact. When the end comes we feel their death in a personal way that few films on the subject have. Pszoniak plays Korczak (who is based on a real person) with great strength. Korczak's insistence on not accepting the Nazi status quo sometimes works, often doesn't even achieve short term ends, but is the only moral stand to be taken. The end, a fantasy shot of the children and the doctor running from the cattle car into a field of light, is somewhat controversial. It would, in another film, seem a poetic cop-out. Here, it works because even as the image plays out on the screen, your mind sees their real end that the rest of the film has prepared you for.

One can't help but feel that Spielberg was influenced by this film when he made SCHINDLER'S LIST, a film that's perhaps visually more flashy than KORCZAK, but which doesn't have KORCZAK's clear moral purpose at its core. Wajda is given "special thanks" in the screen credits of the Spielberg film.

Korczak, directed by Andrzej Wajda, retraces the last episode of the life of Henryk Goldszmit, internationally renowned Polish writer and pediatrician. Author of books on the education of children, he ran an orphanage in Warsaw which had to be transferred to the ghetto. He stayed until the end with the 200 children he had gathered by accompanying them, on August 6, 1942, to Treblinka camp. A true hero, he went to his death so that the children of the Warsaw orphanage would have a friend with them at the end. The script, one of the five that Agnieszka Holland wrote for Wajda's films, unfolds the events in chronological order. It all began in 1936, with anti-Semitic pressures that ended in the removal of Henryk Goldszmit's program on child rearing, although he chose to Polish his name with Janusz Korczak. Korczak, with its factual relationship to history, without spectacular effects, avoiding as far as possible images that are too shocking, announces Schindler's List, which Steven Spielberg achieved three years later. Korczak owes much to the sober and fair playacting of Wojciech Pszoniak, one of the great Polish actors familiar with the work of Andrzej Wajda: we saw him in seven Wajda essays, including Danton (1983), The Wedding (Wesele, 1973) and The Promised Land (Ziemia obiecana, 1975). Among the best dramatic films related to the Holocaust which I have seen I'm afraid I wouldn't include the TV series Holocaust or Inglourious basterds (2009) or Life is beautiful (1997) - which, by the way, WERE NOT biopics, but I'd place Korczak (a biopic) among the give-or-take 20 best, just after Judgment at Nurenberg (both versions), The pianist (2003) Au revoir les enfants, Schindler's list, Enemies, a love story (1989), Amen (2002), Nuit et brouillard (1956), The diary of Anne Frank (both versions), The reader (2008), Europa Europa (1990), The pawnbroker (1964), The boy in the striped pyjama, Denial (2016), Fiddler on the roof (1971), Ida (2015), Woman in gold and Playing for time.

I saw "Korczak" for the first time in the late 1990s when a young teen, and even then I remember cringing at the amateur way the production had been handled. Why? Because I also saw "Schindler's List" prior to it and realized that, by comparison, "Korczak" feels like a high school video project...a very bad one at that! I've recently rewatched it and the impression was even worse.

Now, don't get me wrong, the subject matter is important, the story is incredible and this film needed to be made, just not by the people it was...unfortunately.

I think Wajda is hugely overrated. His movies always struck me as excessively "theatrical"...as in they look like someone only knew theater but wanted to try cinema for a goof; sort of "let's put the camera in front of the stage and hope for the best" approach. "Korczak", by comparison with the rest of Wajda's movies isn't the worst actually...if it wasn't for the horrendous production value! And it's not even about the budget; it's more about the craft. I realize it's a 1990 movie but only three years later a true timeless cinematic masterpiece followed - "Schindler's List"! And Spielberg spectacularly achieved what he had intended by using his groundbreaking and innovative imagery (credit to the great Janusz Kaminski here) - he wanted the film to look and feel so no one could tell when it was made. "Schindler's List" stomped "Korczak" to a pulp.

My main criticisms are:

• Horrible sound
• Horrible cinematography
• Horrible editing
• Just bad directing overall, which reflects on acting

I honestly think someone should reintroduce Korczak's story to world cinema in a manner it deserves as the 1990 film looks like something hastily put together in 1950.

The Doctor strikes one as a solid man - man of courage, unbreakable. Yet to the entreaty of the resistance movement, he says "I have no dignity. I have 200 children." What are we to think of his ultimate actions in walking his children into the death trains? Wajda seems to give these final actions an air of honor, and a dreamlike finale scene, but we must reflect what these children would suffer upon their peaceful entrance to those cars.

What is needful, above all else is to remain living. But living as human beings, not slaves, victims of sexual and sadistic perverts, cattle. Where do we see the dignity of the human spirit in this film? We see it in the doctor and in the resistance fighters, perhaps in some of the kids. All others are broken spirits, hollow remnants of humans. Anything is worthwhile if it will maintain man's humanity in such times. They should have sang, danced, created, or fought, killed, destroyed. In the resistance fighters that rush upon the scene so briefly, we see the sparkling eyes of men not bound by fear, free men. Korczak also remains free spiritually, refusing the armband, but we see that in his personal resistance he can only expect to be broken or killed by one of the many Germans that he'll encounter. He can expect to see his children hideously killed, and himself comforting them to no avail. Anything is good if it maintains the spirit. Perhaps training the children to fight would have been appropriate. Certainly no non-violent means of resistance are affective against the Nazi's. As Gandhi says, non-violent resistance does not work on machines and beasts. The Nazi's were machines.

It is tempting to condemn Korczak for his ultimate actions - thought it shows a pathetic tendency in him which runs throughout the film. He wants to give people a dignified death, to save children without sending the non-Jewish-looking one's to hide with Poles. Has he not shut himself to the truth - that truth which the escaped man yelled out on the streets before his death? "They are sending you to your death!" Korczak, the lover of children, leads them proudly to their cart. Had the resistance shot him as a conspirator and taken the children to be trained to fight, or disperse them to seek their own survival - would not this have been somehow better than aiding the Germans in a neat efficient murder of Jewish children?

**** 2010 Update **** Rereading this after so many years - I see the foolish strictness of my college years. No one can know, growing up in a peaceful luxurious time, the feelings of a man responsible for the lives of all those children. I give all respect and honor to Korczak, blessings on his name and memory for the torments endured and the good he did in his life.

In Warsaw, Doctor Henryk Goldszmit a.k.a. Janusz Korczak (Wojciech Pszoniak) runs an orphanage with a great dedication and love for the orphans. After the invasion of Poland by the German army, his orphanage moves to the Warsaw ghetto with two hundred children. Dr. Korczak asks for food and money from the wealthy Jews and tells that his dignity is the two hundred children he needs to feed. When the ghetto is displaced to Treblinka by train, Dr. Korczak refuses a Swiss passport and embarks in the train with his beloved children.

"Korczak" is a touching and heartbreaking film about a man that dedicated his life to raise a group of Jewish orphans in the invaded Poland. The biography of this man is impressive, and his self-sacrifice to stay with the children in their final journey is amazing. Andrzej Wajda uses black and white to disclose this dark moment of mankind history and his style seems to have inspired Steven Spielberg in his "Schindler's List' three years later. The sad fate of Dr. Korczak and his 200 children is symbolic and very beautiful. This film was released on VHS in Brazil by FJ Lucas Distributor. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): "As 200 Crianças do Dr. Korczak" ("The 200 Children of the Dr. Korczak")